Healing When It Seems Impossible, with Dr. Shiroko Sokitch. The Functional Gynecologist Podcast #50.

Foreign. Hi, I'm Dr. Tabitha, the functional gynecologist. I'm a board certified OB GYN and functional medicine physician. I've embraced the world of functional medicine and wellness through my own personal health journey and I'm super excited to share my wisdom and unique perspective as it pertains to women's health. So if you're struggling with hormone imbalance, weight gain, period issues, anxiety, insomnia, you name it, then you've come to the right place. I want to be your functional gynecologist. So welcome. Hi ladies. Welcome back again. This week is going to be a great conversation with a doctor out of California. I'm really excited about this conversation because she has also been trained in the conventional world. She's an MD but she has been practicing Chinese medicine for 20 years. So it's pretty cool. We are going to talk about her book, Healing When It Seems Impossible. Seven Keys to Defy the she's going to talk about her triangle of wellness that has to be addressed with her patients. And I would completely agree with her that you have to have your hormones balance, your immune system functioning properly and your nervous system up to par for the rest of your body to work. And she's going to explain how using Chinese medicine actually does that. So it's really neat. Interesting conversation today. I feel like I learned some stuff. It was really good. So I really want you to listen to the whole episode. I, you know, I'm so honored that you're here. If for some reason you have to hit pause, you can always come back later. Right? So before we get started, let me just sing her praises. Dr. Shiroko Sokich is the owner and practitioner at Heart to Heart Medical center in California. She's board certified in medical acupuncture, integrative medicine and functional medicine. Has been practicing blend of Chinese and Western medicine for nearly 30 years, including 10 years as an ER physician which we talk about. Very interesting. Our perspectives as conventional doctors gone into the, you know, more integrative practice. So in that time she has helped over 40,000 people heal their bodies and reclaim their lives. So I'm gonna have the link for her book in my show notes and the link for her website in case you want to work with virtually. This is a great conversation. So here we go. Welcome Dr. Cirocco, thanks for being on the Functional Gynecologist podcast.

I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, this is going to be an awesome conversation because we take care of the same type of women, right?

Yes, we Do? Yeah.

Been practicing, you said 27 years. Hey.

Yeah.

Wow. How long has your focus really been on more of the wellness aspect with Chinese medicine and functional medicine?

Well, I've been doing Chinese medicine for all of that time, and functional medicine gradually got incorporated into my practice. I've been doing acupuncture for actually 30 years now.

That sounds amazing. How does an MD get into that situation?

But it has to be a weirdo at those times. So, I mean, I did my residency in surgery, and I was in the surgery residency probably a year when I hit my first midlife crisis. And I began to start questioning what I was doing. And, you know, as a kid, I always wanted to be a doctor. And my interest was natural medicine, and it was herbs and all kinds of natural things. And then I got into medical school, and the first time I got to save a life was in the ER in surgery, really. And my whole, like, my whole world changed because I was so interested in, like, saving lives. So then I went into surgery kind of last minute because that was in my. The end of my third year of medical school that I had that experience, and I was like, oh, my God. And they liked me as a. So I got into a surgical residency, and then I began to have all these, like, personal experiences of my own, sort of like, I had achieved my lifelong goal. And suddenly all of the traumas that were in my past started to come up. But also I began to see that. That it wasn't all, like, saving a life had more. Had a lot of factors, and it wasn't just taking a person from death's door. It was like how, you know, their soul and their spirit and their, you know, all kinds of things were involved in them being healthy. And I began to look at things differently, especially because there were people, like, no matter what we did, we couldn't get them healthy. Like, the best of medical care that we could provide didn't help them. And so I just began searching. And I took a month off my residency, and I began to ask that question of, like, what is. What should I be doing? And I had this dream. If you stay in surgery, you will die. It was literally like a banner, like, ah. And so I was already searching, so I just kept searching. And somebody gave me a book called the Web that has no Weaver, which is a book about acupuncture and Chinese medicine, and beautifully written book. It's an old, old book. I think it was written in 1975, but I fell in love with the whole concept of Chinese medicine and began to Think about energy and using acupuncture and herbs and natural healing and all of that stuff that had always interested me, except for that time in medical school. And so just one thing led to another. I left my residency at the end of my second year, went to work in the ER and went to acupuncture school. So my residency was three years of acupuncture school.

That is so awesome. I mean, I remember being an intern, and it's like you'd get these repeat offenders who you would just keep saving. You'd put the band aids on and send them back out the door, and they would just come back. It's frustrating and it's not fulfilling. And I totally understand, like, that's not what we went to med school for necessarily. There's something bigger. I love that you listened to that little voice inside of you and you went for it. That's beautiful. You embraced this whole world of Chinese medicine, and you have been healing women with other modalities. What is your typical patient look like nowadays?

Well, a lot of people that come to me have had some health issue for a long time or have had a mystery or symptoms that nobody else seems to recognize. Chinese medicine is really super cool because it's just different enough from Western medicine so that you can have a different approach to the same issues and then get slightly different answers, which will help the person that comes to see me will help them understand themselves, and it helps me understand what's going on with them. So I have a different approach of being able to recognize what's wrong. Then over the years, I've studied functional medicine and became certified with the ifm. I have that approach to add to my Chinese medicine approach. So I basically use both. Often women who are, you know, perimenopausal, so around midlife, they've been struggling with some kind of symptoms. Often those are probably related to autoimmune disease. So they're tired, they're maybe wired and tired, and, you know, pain everywhere and digestive issues and maybe migraines. So, like a whole confluence of symptoms. And often they're told that they're depressed or they need an antidepressant and you know that nothing's wrong, especially if they're kind of early in the perimenopausal process. Because the tests, the blood tests that Standard do won't show menopause, and they won't show that their periods aren't irregular yet, but they're having a ton of symptoms. And so that's sort of a typical person that I work with.

Yeah. And where do you start with them? Are you doing the whole functional medicine where you're listening to their story and you're trying to get all aspects, body, mind and spirit and incorporate that?

Well, in Chinese medicine, it's very much that way as well. And how the organs work is different than how they work in Western medicine. And I've been doing medicine a lot longer, so I basically use both. I use Chinese medicine to understand a person, and when I feel their pulse and look at their tongue, I can see what organs are out of balance. I'll give you an example, because maybe your audience doesn't know how Chinese medicine works, but the whole idea in Chinese medicine is that you're made up of energy, and energy travels through your body in certain patterns. When your energy is out of balance, there are problems. What you want to do is you want to figure out where the imbalance is. The organs work differently than they do in Western medicine. For example, the liver regulates the smooth flow of energy in your whole body. It regulates the emotion of anger, your menstrual cycles, and the ligaments and tendons. It's the master sergeant of getting things done. If you were to translate that into Western medicine, the liver actually deals with stress. Of course, it also does the detox function that we already know it to do. A woman who's having really bad perimenopausal symptoms, she might have that irritability before her period. She might get migraines. All of those things are symptoms of liver imbalance. I listen to all of that when I take a history and the initial visit. I spend a lot of time asking a lot of different questions that are also functional medicine based. But then I also get the Chinese medicine, and then I do a physical exam that's both Chinese and Western. And based on what I find, then I recommend tests that will help me understand it better.

That's so awesome. Then you're incorporating acupuncture and all of these modalities to treat them, right?

Yeah. A lot of women who are in perimenopause, I can regulate just with acupuncture.

Oh, that's so beautiful. Yeah.

Which sounds like the invasive. And so, yeah, putting a needle in someone is invasive, but it is actually a way of getting you to be balanced with yourself where you don't have to take something else, you know, so. Yeah, yeah.

Why? So what brought you to write your book when it seems impossible?

Well, many things. I've always wanted to write a book, so it took me a really long time to get it done. But it's based on many different factors, and it's called healing when it seems impossible. Seven keys to defy the odds and there are certain elements of my own story that come into play. So part of it is the transitions that I've had at different times. You know, like, my first midlife crisis was when I went from surgery to ER doctor to, you know, studying Chinese medicine. And then my second midlife crisis was when I was about 40, which is when you're supposed to have it. And then my third one was when my husband asked me to divorce or to split up when I was 49. And that was really what broke me. It was kind of like, oh, you know, because I believed that he was my soulmate and that we were meant to be together forever. And I was heartbroken. And my perspective on life changed. You know, Like, I. My perspective on who I was and what I felt about life. My business, he. And he ran my business, and so my business changed drastically. There were many things that just kind of fell apart for me, and it was through the love of my friends and the love of my patients and all of this connection that I had that supported me that I was able to heal from that. And so the first key of my book is love as a healing modality, because it was the thing that changed me the most. So, like, in hindsight, it was a good thing to end that marriage so that I could learn all of the things that I learned and so I could be a different person. So there are many elements. The other is how I approach healing for a person who has a mystery. So the second key is finding physical balance. And when somebody has a mysterious illness, we don't know what to do. We'll do a million tasks, and we, you know, as conventional doctors, we don't know where to go with that. But so using both Chinese and functional medicine, I began to look at people like, if you have certain things in place, you can heal from anything. That's the whole idea in Chinese medicine, is that there's a certain substrate to healing, and if you have those things in place, you can heal. I call that the triangle of wellness, which is hormones, immune system, and nervous system. If you have that, if you have your hormones functioning, your immune system and your nervous system functioning, then you can heal, even if you don't know what you have, or even if you don't know what's wrong. Yeah, yeah. And I've done that all these years. It took me a long time to figure out that that's what I was doing. But that's so many patients where they come in with something mysterious, and I'd be like, okay, where's the root cause? So that's the other element is finding the root cause, which is very much the same as functional medicine, you know, looking for the root cause, which sometimes we can't find.

Yeah. And sometimes, you know, you mentioned betrayal, like your husband saying, hey, out of nowhere, I want a divorce. And, you know, I was just talking to Dr. Debbie Silber about that, about how women have to go through stages of acceptance and creating a new perception of their life to heal from things like betrayal. So I can imagine that, you know, it's not just physical, but I love the idea that you're getting the physical all into balance, you know, with Chinese medicine, so that you can do this other work. That's awesome. Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow. What are the other. Other keys?

Yeah. So the third key is finding your own unique lifestyle. So, you know, there's a million diets, there's a million ways to exercise, and there's a million attitudes you could have, and so what's right for you and how do you do that? So that's that. And then the fourth key is learning to listen to your body. So you kind of switch between the third key and the fourth key in order to. So you try something to figure out, and then you listen. And the keys to listening come from Chinese medicine. So what I love about this chapter is that I take Chinese medicine and give you the information like, okay, your liver regulates your ligaments and tendons. It rules your eyes. So if your vision is blurry or you're having dry eyes or something that's connected to your liver as well, or you have migraines, that's connected to your liver. So all of that's listed so that you can actually diagnose yourself or understand yourself better by listening to your body, you can adjust your lifestyle and go back and forth. Then the fifth key is emotion and understanding how your emotions play a role in your health. Again, each organ system in Chinese medicine has an emotional and a spiritual function that we don't have in Western medicine. Like I said, liver rules anger, the kidneys rule fear, and the kidneys rule your overall sense of having energy. So they have a lot to do with your adrenal hormones, and they also rule your low back, your knees, your bones, your ears, your physical brain. So there's a lot of different functions an organ will have in Chinese medicine that we don't in Western medicine. So as you Begin to understand what you're feeling. You can understand which organ is out of balance, and then you can do things to help it be balanced.

That's amazing. So sounds like a lot of women have kidney issues, because I see all kinds of adrenal dysfunction in my office all day long. Right. And yeah, it's just our modern society, we've kind of created this and it's overtaken us and we don't. We're just on this roller coaster called life. We're not stopping to even process what we're thinking or feeling. We're not. Yeah, time to breathe or eat appropriately. We're just on this roller coaster. As a Chinese practitioner, how would you go about approaching that?

The kidney dysfunction, kidney imbalance, that's another thing to know is that these organs are all the same as our big organs that you can't live without. But if I say you have a kidney imbalance, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will even have an abnormal blood test.

Right.

So one of the things that we talk about or that I talk about a lot is that because in Western medicine there's this sort of narrow band of what we call disease where we can diagnose something, but a person can feel crappy in a very large band of discomfort. Right.

So.

And the Western medicine is here, Chinese medicine covers the whole thing.

Right.

So that you can begin to understand yourself. Right. So kidney imbalance can be many different things, but basically how I treat it is to first recognize it. And then I use either acupuncture. I will often do adrenal hormone profile, like the Dutch test. Do you use the Dutch test?

Yeah, I love the Dutch test. So good.

I love that test too. Yeah. So I'll use that test to look at their hormones. And what I love about it is that it looks at how your hormones are actually processed in your body, not just what the levels are, so that we have a clue of what's going on, which is so important because it's hard to have a window into physiologic function. Even with standard medical tests. It's not a deep window into physiological function. And some of these extra tests that we can do will show us so much more. So I love to do that test. And then I do. I teach them self acupressure, certain techniques of self acupressure, exercises that they can do. Diet, there's certain foods, there's foods that help every organ. So I'll talk about foods. And if acupuncture doesn't work, then I'll Use herbs or supplements. I use bioidentical hormone replacement to help people get their hormones in balance. Or I'll use supplements. Like one of my favorite. There's a couple of my favorite kidney herbs is ashwagandha and holy basil.

Yeah, those are so good. I mean, I think it's important for women to realize that bioidentical hormones are not something to be afraid of. Right. It's a quick, easy win to get you back into balance so you can do the bigger work and get your body to heal itself. I think that's important. You know, we need to support our organs, like you're saying, with the adaptogens and things like that. You hit on so many good things. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, I love. I need my listeners to understand, like, and I need my dogs to leave me alone. Sorry, go away.

No way.

Sorry.

Yeah, no, it's okay.

I would love for my listeners to realize that conventional medicine is very much based in this disease model and you have to be really far down the path of dysfunction to finally be diagnosed and have abnormal lab values. And you don't want to have to get to that point where you're showing that your kidneys aren't functioning anymore. Right. You want to be catching that way further up the path, like you said, when things are starting to get imbalanced and you're not, you know, your creatinine level is not at 1.5. So I think it's so important for us to shift our mindset of, you know, healthcare providers actually creating health and not just keeping you in this sickness state and stuff. I remember watching a video that you did and you were saying that our medical system has become disconnected from caring. And that just hit me, like, is so true. You know, you worked in the ER department. Physicians are so overworked and burnt out that we can't care anymore. I mean, we are just like bringing you through the factory, trying to crank them out every 15 minutes and you lose your ability to almost care. And I think that has so much to do with helping people get well. So I love that you're doing this work in such a different way because it's so needed.

Right.

I mean, people need to understand that the medical system as we know it is a sick care system. It's going to keep you alive, it's going to save your life, it's going to give you surgery, you know, if your appendix blows up. But it's not going to get you balanced, it's not going to get you well. People need to seek out people like you and I for that.

Right.

Such a different mindset.

Yeah.

Well, against that a lot. I mean. Or are you around people that get it and they're just like, I'm ready to work? Or do you get a lot of people who don't really understand that whole.

I think, you know, there's a sort of a.

How do I say it?

I get a lot of people who expect their insurance to help them have the kind of health they want.

Yeah.

And health. Our insurance is part of a sickness care system, so our insurance doesn't cover getting healthy.

Yeah.

But I think with this COVID epidemic that's happening, people are beginning to recognize that they have to take charge of their own health. And so I feel like that is more like I've gotten busier in the last couple months. The first couple months, not so busy because I'm an in person doctor since I do acupuncture. But in the last couple months I've become more busy because I think people are beginning to recognize they need to take charge and take care of themselves. And really that that's not in their insurance model. How our insurance is structured is not for that is not in that model. And so they're more willing to do that. But the other thing, what you were talking about was caring. And I learned that in medical school. You know, I remember in medical school we were taught, do not like, do not get involved.

Right.

And it was one of the first things that we learned was like, you're not, you know, you have to maintain your professional distance. And you know, we are healers, physicians are healers just as much as other kinds of practitioners. We're healers. Our job is to help people heal. There is no way you cannot get involved.

Right.

That's what I learned. And I began to be okay with that, you know, after studying acupuncture and then working on myself. Because a lot of my journey has been parallel my own experiences to, you know, to the work that I do with people. And I'm a person who's always been seeking answers. You know, I want to, I want to help people get well, just like that, you know, So I. That's my belief in miracles, you know.

So.

I feel like caring is an important part of the equation.

Yeah. But I feel like so many well intentioned people go into medicine because they want to heal, they want to help, and they have that big heart. And like you said, it's almost brainwashed into us to not get involved, maintain distance, especially in a surgical residency. You know, I Was I did a surgical residency as well. And it's like, you can't get emotionally attached because you are cutting people open and then sending them on their way. And I found that super difficult. And I think we need to bring back that loving, caring physician, that healer mindset, because we are doing our country a disservice by training physicians and getting that out of their mind, that they're healing people and that they're just like a carpenter or, you know, a plumber. They're just fixing something. It's not an actual soul, and they're not making those connections. And that's where we're. We're just losing so much of the ability to even heal, because I think it has to do with connection, like you said. So it's so deep. And I feel the same way about insurance. I think that I don't blame anyone. People are taught and told all day long, especially during a political season, hey, you should have insurance. Insurance keeps you healthy. It makes you well. You got to have the best coverage. That is what your doctors need you to have. And I will tell you that insurance keeps my hands in shackles. Like, I feel like it's a huge barrier to getting my patients well. It shifts their mindset. They think these tests, these medicines should fix me, you know, and it takes the pressure off for them to do the work. And so we need a big shift in this country. And I want people to understand that you can have the most amazing insurance in the world, and it's not ever gonna get you well. Right?

No.

Yeah. Oh, my goodness.

Yeah. I mean, that's. That's. That I don't take insurance. So that's. And that's why. Because when I used to take insurance, I would have people come in who are not invested in their wellness.

Yeah. Because it is an investment. You know, it's like, you get one body, you might as well take care of it. Right.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, my goodness. So give me an example of someone who has been through, you know, your process, who has transformed and reclaimed their life. Like, what is a typical scenario that you see?

Well, I'll talk about somebody I'm working with now who's a fairly young woman, she's in her 30s, who had a bad car accident a couple years ago, and then she had a miscarriage a year ago, and then she got some infection, and so they had to give her antibiotics. And then since then, she's had irritable bowel syndrome, and so she had a lot of pain from the accident, and then the miscarriage was emotionally devastating and traumatic. And when I saw her, she hadn't had a period in like six months. And. She. Oh, the other thing was she'd had heartburn for like years, years and years and was on all those medications. So that was before the accident. So there's like this whole series of things. Right. And so I started with acupuncture, did some testing, looked at hormone levels, did some other things, but it was really with the acupuncture that. And changing her diet, she began to. Her period started within a month, her pain in her body. So she was also having vertigo and tinnitus, I think, from the accident. So those things started to go away right away. So within a month or two. And then the heartburn had been there for longer, and so that took longer. And I still think that. So that took like four months. And I got her off of the medications and she lost like 30 pounds, I think. And so now she's able to eat whatever she wants. She's having periods trying to get pregnant again and has overcome the fear of that trauma of trying to get pregnant again, and then the pain is gone. So not going into a lot of detail because it's story, but that is sort of common, you know, in the way that I work, within six months, depending on how long somebody's had an issue, you know, like because she'd had the heartburn for years, but she'd only had the car accident two years before and the miscarriage a year before. So those things went away more quickly or those things improved more quickly.

Yeah. And I think that story is all too common. Right. I see that a lot. Somebody has a physical trauma, maybe surgery, back surgery, things like that, or car accidents, they have the emotional trauma or even the emotion of like having a baby that's emotionally stressful as well, and gut and a poor diet and all of these things. And I feel like you can go down the path of getting on more medications which create new symptoms, which muck up the picture. Right. Or more surgeries, or you can find the root causes and start to get things back into balance and deal with those emotional stressors and get back to your best self. So I feel like it's kind of two different paths for patients, and so often they're on the wrong path for so long. I want people to realize it's never too late. Right. I bet you get women who have been down that wrong path for decades and then they can make a major breakthrough. I mean, I see it every day. It's beautiful.

Yeah. So the Last two keys of my book, the seven keys to defy the odds. The sixth key is never give up.

Yes.

To never. To have patience and persistence. Because it can take a while to get answers, to find the right practitioners, to find the right path. And it's really a hero's journey. Like, you're on a quest to find your own healing. And whenever you have a difficult health issue. We're used to having people be difficult. Right. So we have interactions with people, and we know that it's a spiritual lesson. We have to grow from that experience, you know, dealing with our families or spouses or whatever. But we're not used to recognizing our bodies as our very own spiritual school. And so when you have a health challenge, that is what is happening, you will be transformed by that journey of getting well. So never give up. And then the seventh key is to trust the process. So, like, whatever journey you've been through, seeing. Maybe many of my patients have seen seven, eight, nine doctors. Right. Or have a team of doctors that they're working with and getting a lot of different inputs. And so to trust that that process is taking you somewhere, even if it looks like it was a dead end, because there's something else happening. If there's a reason that you're going through this, there's a reason that you're learning this. So many of my friends, as, you know, the people in the mindshare, so many of those people are healers because of what they went through, right?

Yeah.

Myself included. Their journey of getting well. Yeah. With whatever challenge that you're faced with, that journey takes you to a new place. You know, my journey of going through a divorce, well, I've had other health journeys as well, but those journeys brought me to who I am today. The reason I'm a doctor is because when I was five years old, my great grandmother collapsed in front of me and died. And she was my best friend. And when my mom told me she had died, my first thought was, how can I bring her back? What can I do? And since then, that's how I thought it was. Like, what can I do? How can I fix this? How can I be better? How can I help? So we all have a story. We all have a journey that we've gone through. And that is our mission is to help other people with our story.

Oh, that's so beautiful. I love it so much. I'm so glad you're doing this work and that you wrote this book, because women need to see there is a way through. You can find the purpose from the pain. Right. You can learn the lessons and become your best self. That's so good. Oh, my God. So where can my listeners find you?

Well, it's easy. My website is hearttoheartmedicalcenter.com and spelled out a T, A, R, T, O. And so you can go there. My book is there. There's a free gift if you want. There's a couple of books, a chapter, a sample chapter of the book is called the Hero's Journey. And then another free gift is a book on how to choose supplements called Supplements Smart.

Oh, that's a good book. All right.

Yeah, Yeah. A lot of people need an education on how to choose supplements, so.

Yeah, exactly. That is wonderful. I will have all those links in my show notes. That's awesome. Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Shiroko. This has been lovely and I hope people connect with you because you are doing amazing things. Do you work with patients virtually or only in the office?

Yeah, no, I work virtually as well now.

Okay. Okay. I have those links to my show notes. Awesome. Well, we've been praying for you with the fires and everything. Okay. Hang in there.

Yeah.

So much. Yeah. Thank you.

Have a great day. Yeah.

Care. That was awesome. I hope you got so much out of that. I know I did. I think the biggest key takeaway is to keep having hope. Don't give up hope and know that it's gonna take some work and it might take some time, but you're on the right path and you're on the path to healing. It's gonna be worth it. Right? So don't give up hope. I really want you to get her book, Healing when it seems impossible and know that there's answers out there. Work with a functional practitioner, an alternative holistic practitioner like Dr. Shiroko or myself, because the answers are out there. Your amazing best self is out there. I mean, that was what. That's what helped me heal, is I was able to imagine myself as a healthy, happy woman who wasn't in pain all day, who wasn't exhausted, who wasn't overweight and miserable like I envisioned the women I wanted to become. And I became her. So I want to help you become your best self. So if that means you just need to work in the group program and you just need to tweak some things, hit the reset button, then join my sisterhood, the renew you sisterhood. We're about to embark on a 10 week comprehensive program that's going to get your hormones balanced naturally. Because what we're going to do is we're going to teach your body how to be a fat burner again so it's not relying on food all day long. We're going to get freedom from food. We're going to balance your gut bugs because they're kind of running the show. We need to keep those in balance. We're going to get your sleep dialed in and and you get your stress managed. This is all going to balance your hormones naturally. This program is amazing. So I really want you to consider joining. I'll put the link in my show notes. Time and time again, women are just transformed. They can't get over the fact that it's not just a quick fix, it's not just a diet. It's not just this 10 week program that you do and then you go back to your old ways. It's a lifestyle transformation. So it's a reset, reboot. Renew. Renew you sisterhood. I want you to take back your life. I want you to be the woman of your dreams. Okay? So connect with me on Facebook or Instagram, on my website. Dr. Tabitha, join my program. I want you to be your best self. Like that's why I'm here. I'm here to help guide you because I know you can do it. I did it. I didn't think it was possible and I figured it out and I did it and you can too. So please join me. In the meantime, go out and have a kick ass week. Bye friends.